Category: Sights

We learn from our students

Students can turn you on the the oddest stuff. We talked about musique concrète in my Intro to Music Tech class the other day, and after class a student (Spencer) said it reminded him of this:

Dig the lederhosen wearing, serpent playing horn section. Spencer’s favorite part was the record scratching parrot voice. It’s like a modern day Officer Krupke…sort of.

LOLs video

Maybe the only way to break my unfortunate “one post per month” recent pace is to make multiple posts on one day a month…

Anyway, last Tuesday the Laptop Orchestra of Louisiana (LOLs) played a concert in Free Speech Alley at LSU. It was fun. There was sunburn. Someone shot video.

We did a number of pieces that day. The piece in this footage is something we called “own instrument improv.” It is an improvisation, in which we each play an instrument of our own design. I was playing a joystick instrument that I designed for a piece called Forbidden Butch and another instrument that I call R2D2 because it sounds a little bit like the droid. They were both made in Max/MSP. The forbidden butch instrument uses a Logitech Joystick, and the R2D2 instrument uses an AKAI LPD8 as a controller, although it can be played without the LPD8. If you want to check out the patches, send me an email, and I’ll send them to you.

In Bb 2.0 or internet art

My friend John Worthington tweeted this link earlier today. It is a fun instance of internet art.

http://www.inbflat.net/

As described on the site:

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.

The videos can be played simultaneously — the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.